My earlier post went over the controversy (imagined or not) over coffee and its effect on fertility.
Personally, if I’m jonesing for coffee after 3 pm (my danger zone for having it keep me up), I’ll opt for an caffeinated espresso (oddly, less caffeine although it tastes strong, than regular coffee) than a decaf.
The healthy-sounded Swiss-water process sounded nice, until I thought–it has to involve more than just swishing water through the beans, or else you’ll just have plain old coffee (water + coffee = coffee). No, in order to extract the caffeine, you’re going to need a pretty strong solvent.
Coffee is decaffeinated through either the direct or indirect method,
both of which rely on a particular decaffeinating agent. Note: both
decaffeination methods remove at least 97% of the caffeine but not all.
Direct Method: The beans are steamed or soaked, the decaffeinating
agent is mixed in, and the beans are steamed and dried to remove the
agent.
Indirect Method: First, water is added to the steamed beans to draw
a decaffeinating agent. However, the coffee does retain its flavor
and aroma in the process. Finally, the flavor rich water is recycled
to the next batch of beans. Mmmm….water process.
Ugh: here are the list of decaffeination chemicals, all of which are approved by the Federal Drug Administration: pretreated charcoal, oils extracted from coffee beans, carbon dioxide, ethyl acetate, and methylene
chloride. I personally think a fresh brewed cup of organic coffee is worth the jitters, in comparison.
General caffeine rules for the not trying to conceive: doctor-friends I have interviewed and articles scanned suggest that the amount needed to cause the anxiety, sleep disturbances, heart palpitations, and other adverse effects described earlier varies widely among individuals. It seems that an amount between 50 and 200 milligrams a day (or about two 5 ounce cups of coffee) is a good amount to shoot for, for the average person. And, obviously, the later at night your intake is, the likelier you will have sleep problems.
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